Journalist, editor and publisher, born in the village of Embleton in Northumberland. The son of a Congregational minister, he was brought up in Howden-on-Tyne and educated at home by his father. In 1870, he began submitting articles to the fledgling Darlington newspaper, The Northern Echo and, a year later, aged just 22, became editor.
Stead viewed his editorship as "a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil". He wrote candidly on subjects such as prostitution, and in 1876, gained internationally notoriety for his attacks on Turkish Atrocities in war-torn Bulgaria. In 1880, he left The Northern Echo to join the Pall Mall Gazette in London. When its then editor, John Morley, resigned in 1883, Stead took over and immediately set about raising his political profile by involving the P.M.G. in several sensational political crusades, most notably, "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" (1885), which briefly landed him in prison.
Such crusades consolidated Stead's journalistic power and, for a time, made him one of the most influential men in London. But his methods often put him at odds with his employers and, ultimately frustrated by this, he resigned his editorship in 1890 to found the international periodical, The Review of Reviews. Thereafter, his journalistic influence declined; his pro-Boer stance during the Boer War (1899-1902) fatally damaged his political integrity, and his interest in spiritualism resulted in his being derided in many circles as a fanatic and a crank.
Today, Stead is seen as a highly significant contributor to the development of popular journalism, though, his reputation as the inventor of so-called "New Journalism" is, perhaps, overstated. In his final years, he became renowned as an international peace campaigner and was several times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He died in the Titanic disaster on the morning of April 15, 1912.
Owen Mulpetre © 2006
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